Which is the most obscure Chinese province?

This is one of my favorite links of the year so far, namely how every Chinese province got its name. I cannot recommend it to most of you however, but if you ever have worried about Shanxi vs. Shaanxi, this is the place to go:

Shaanxi is unique amongst Chinese provinces in being the only one whose name is rendered not in Hanyu Pinyin but in Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR), the romanization system used in pre-Communist China. Instead of using accents above letters as in Pinyin, tones in GR were reflected in spelling. In Pinyin, which was invented in 1958, the provinces Shanxi and Shaanxi are indistinguishable in spelling, so the old romanization was retained to remove this ambiguity. However, authorities still tacked on the Pinyin “xi” instead of the GR “shi” to spell out the second character, making Shaanxi’s name even more unusual by combining two entirely different romanization systems within a single name.

I say the most obscure Chinese province is the very small Ningxia 寧夏, outlined in red below, what do you think? Or does it count only as an autonomous region? Is Gansu perhaps a runner up?

Which is the most obscure American state to an outsider? Nebraska? Idaho? Somewhere else? (I say it helps the Dakotas that you have two of them.) I believe the Clintons put Arkansas on the map, globally speaking that is, thereby removing it from contention for this honor.

Yes, but Ohio has the distinction of being the only state where the top term for job searches was “potato”. Considering Ohio is not even among the top 10 potato producers, this statistic probably says more about Ohioans and their ambitions than anything.https://www.zippia.com/advice/surprising-job-map-of-america/

I was raised in Idaho, but I’m not sure its the most obscure state. One thing not taken into account is population. Idaho is quickly growing and should reach 2 million people soon. There are at least a half dozen states with fewer people.

+1. Someone at Stanford once asked me “if it was in Connecticut” when I said my parents were living in RI (embarrassing for all concerned – the people, the states, and the university – although she went to a public high school in California, so maybe California should be the most ashamed).

Delaware gets my vote too, or maybe Rhode Island, but as an American my opinion is unreliable and potentially biased. Tyler asked which state is most obscure to an outsider, so we should let the outsiders inform us.

I think these maps of the USA, filled in by Brits, were linked to already in MR. But they give us a hint about which states are most obscure to people in Brtiain.http://www.wimp.com/britishmap/

As a Delawarean, I’ll say Delaware is pretty obscure even to many Americans. Is it the most obscure? I’m not sure. Idaho is a decent answer. Warren Buffett is from Omaha, and (according to wikipedia) five Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Omaha.

It’s gotta be Delaware. It’s obscurity is even highlighted by the fact it is between the arguably most important regions: The Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic. Also it is the only Atlantic state with and American-Indian name.

Its up there, but I don’t think it’s the top. University of Delaware has a solid reputation, the Acela corridor runs through the state, and Delaware is widely known as the legal home of most US companies an an epicenter of corporate law generally. Also the first state historically.

I’m going to second Delaware. All the western states loom large on maps, and are thus more easily remembered. Delaware is tucked into a convoluted corner area. Maryland would fare better due to proximity to Wash DC.
Although, I also think that the Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio quartet would be most likely to be misidentified. Not precisely the same thing, but still.

Delaware is particularly hard to place on the map in your mind’s eye. Arkansas isn’t easy, either. Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need described Arkansas as that state you drive through to get to other states.

Australian here. Indiana is the US state that is the most obscure to me. The sparsely populated western states are familiar from westerns and so loom larger in the imaginations of English speaking foreigners than their populations and exports would suggest. The Southern states tend to be familiar from US Civil War dramas. Massachusetts has an Australian song about it. Connecticut is pretty obscure, as it Vermont, however Rhode Island is saved by being a unit of measurement. But Indiana? Yeah, I’m just blanking on that. I can’t tell you a darn thing about its history, the cities in it, or its economy apart from what I can guess from its position on the map. I think there is a computer game about car racing set in the state. That’s all I got.

But actually Massachusetts is pretty famous. Still I would go for the old East. For me its Mayne. The only thing that comes from Maine is Hawkye from MASH, and maybe Murder She Wrote has some Maine connection too.

I’d say Maryland was pretty obscure until The Wire came out. I only knew about it because I’d lived there for a few weeks. And Frederick Douglass comes from there, but I didn’t know about him until recently.

Maryland is famous because of Baltimore – which was the birth place of H. L. Mencken, Billie Holiday and Babe Ruth. Mencken wrote paeans for his home town. Perhaps his best work. Ruth played his first game for the Baltimore Orioles. Holiday fled to New York as soon as she could. Most education people should know something about one of them.

Yes, Massachusetts is the song about Massachusetts. (Surely there couldn’t be two songs about the place now, could there?)

I am less likely to forget that Maryland is a state because for some reason it is the name of a piece of chicken. Also, it sounds like an euphemism for sexual orientation, as in, “Oh yes, I’m from Maryland.” The Wire was not popular in Australia with one reviewer saying it needed subtitles, but Maryland has long been famous for its drug trade with its production of tobacco.

I know next to nothing about Delaware, but it is (just) saved from obscurity by the phrase, “Incorporated in Delaware”.

Maryland is where British forces who should have easily taken Baltimore got spooked when their commanding officer Major General Robert Ross was shot dead by snipers at the Battle of North Point, so they turned tail. The result was the American national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner (the naval attack was mainly a feint, but snipers are a bit less poetic than some poor guys getting fired on with bombs and rockets).

Shortly before, the British routed American militia by scaring them with Congreve rockets at the battle of Bladensburg (Maryland), and the British troops walked forward and burnt Washington, D.C. As you can imagine, nothing of value was lost, so Ross went up the Chesapeake to Baltimore to try to do some real damage.

Indiana was my first choice too, just because whenever I tried to name the 50 states, it was the one I always forgot. Karma being what it is, I live in Indiana now, either as payback or do I can name all 50 without a glitch.

Mikea, I’ve never seen Hoosiers. We have basketball in Australia, but it’s no where near as popular as in the US. And American football just looks weird to us with all the helmets and pads, but that’s okay. We don’t expect America to look normal.

I will now actually look up Indiana in Wikipedia and see if the article rings any bells…

Nope… My bells remain unrung. But I see Indiana’s Gibson coal Power Station is even a little larger than Australia’s Loy Yang Power Station. (And there’s no truth to the rumour that we called it Loy Yang so people would mistakenly think its carbon emissions belonged to China.)

And I was already vaguely aware there was an auto race in Indiana, but it’s not something I’m very interested in. In fact the horrible organization of racing here in South Australia has put me off it entirely. We have one million square kilometers of land here and they decide to put the car race in that one tiny area of the state where there are actually people to run over.

MY TIME TO SHINE! As a Hoosier (that’s what we call ourselves in Indiana) allow me to introduce you to America’s most underrated state. Indiana is most known to other Americans as a place where basketball is a religion and a long lasting passion for cars and auto racing.

The Indianapolis 500 is the world’s longest running 500 mile race and is the largest single day sporting event in the world every year, getting between 250 and 350 thousand visitors to Indianapolis every year.

Our obsession with High School basketball is like what you might have heard about with other states like Texas when it comes to High School Football. We produce the most division 1 basketball athletes per capita compared to every other state in the country. We have two highly successful professional sports franchises in the Indianapolis Colts (NFL) and the Indiana Pacers (NBA).

Indiana is a large manufacturing hub and logistics hub for much of the United States. One of our state’s nicknames is “The Crossroads of America” and it shows as nearly every single portion of the national highway system finds it’s way through Indiana at some point. Indiana also has a large and growing biotechnology and medical device sector.

Elkhart Indiana (in the Northeastern part of the state) is famous for the production of RV’s and Musical Instruments and throughout the entire state we have a large agricultural sector that produces corn, soybeans, wheat, and a dozen other things I’m sure you could imagine.

The people of Indiana do suffer from a bit of a confidence problem sometimes because of our location and seeing places like Chicago, Detroit (in its heyday), and Ohio as places that people considered just more important and in response we developed an unfailing politeness for visitors, its a thing we call “Hoosier Hospitality” and its a very real thing. We have a well known reputation in Indianapolis (the state’s capital city) for being able to host big events and generally leaving guests incredibly impressed. Indianapolis hosts the NCAA final four every 5 years, we have hosted one of the most successful super bowls in the last 20 years with universal acclaim, the Indianapolis 500 brings in hundreds of thousands as I said earlier, and we are well known as being sports obsessed in general.

Indiana is also by most accounts one of the ‘geekiest’ or ‘geek friendly’ states in the country and is host to the world’s largest table top hobby gaming convention in the world (Gen Con) every year and we’re becoming well known for our craft beer (or so I’m told… I don’t drink so this means nothing to me but people in the know tell me this is a big deal).

So next time you find yourself wondering about Indiana, just remember this message and if you ever find yourself here, let me know and on behalf of all 6.6 Million of us, I promise to show you all the Hoosier Hospitality you can handle.

As somebody who made the round-trip between Maryland and Wisconsin probably close to 50 times over a ten year span, I have to say that I always found the Indiana Toll road to be a pleasant break between the miserable highways in Illinois and Ohio.

A lot of famous people, like Cole Porter and Michael Jackson, are _from_ Indiana.

Two time Oscar winner Alexander Payne, an Omaha native, likes to point out all the movie giants from Nebraska: “We have Harold Lloyd, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda …” The urbane Payne points out that not everybody in Nebraska is a farmer. Payne, for example, grew up around the corner from Warren Buffett.

It’s got to be Nebraska. Nebraska is one of the least interesting states in the US: all plains, landlocked, low population among states, not too rich or poor, with a history section on Wikipedia that basically amounts to “they fought the indigenous population for it back in the 19th century”. About the only things I can think of that are special are the unicameral legislature and chimney rock.

Ah – but to anyone interested in Stonehenge (which gets well over a million visitors a year), Nebraska is the home, in the western panhandle town of Alliance, of Carhenge. A long, long way from anywhere else, true, but definitely worth the trip (I saw it in 2007). A full-scale, correctly astronomically oriented, reproduction of the monument in Wiltshire, but in old automobiles painted stone-grey. A brilliant piece of public sculpture, and having just revisited Stonehenge this past February, an astonishing evocation of the original.

Idaho = potatoes, RI = unit of measurement, Wyoming = Cowboys and Sundance, Delaware widely known because of Delaware Corporations , Indianapolis is the home of the Indianapolis 500 and Indy racing, Nebraska is the home of Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway.

Why do even Americans ask if they need a passport to visit New Mexico?

Another anecdote: I worked on a movie in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The locals told me this story – The bridge over the river there was used in ‘No Country for Old Men’ substituting for the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border crossing in the movie. Aware of the movie, several tourists would commonly ask that if they crossed that bridge, would they be entering Mexico

Done lots of road trips – and nothing is more of a snooze than the drive, in Canada, from Lloydminster down to Regina in Saskatchwan. It makes Kansas look crowded. Every so often there’s a sign: “Middle-of-no-where-ville, 3 Km”. And when you get there the place consists of three houses, a grain elevator and a fuel tank.
In the US, the drive across west Texas, Dallas to El Paso, is another howling bore. Though the one time I did it the unpleasantness was enhanced by the weather (chilly and drizzly) and my condition (moderately hungover).

In college, I learned to my eternal dismay that the halfway point from Los Angeles, California to Austin, Texas is pretty much El Paso. Google tells you it is 12 hours from LA to El Paso, then 9 to Austin, but it fails to account for the temporal distortion caused by the soul-sucking sameness of the landscape. I know it always took us 18-20 hours, and El Paso was halfway.

Driving through Indiana doesn’t even take that long… You must not have driven on I-70 west bound through Kansas after you get past Topeka… that… THAT is the worst place to drive through in the whole country possibly… and on behalf of Hoosiers everywhere… yes… we have… stuff… we like our stuff… leave us alone…

Yeah, Indiana’s not exactly a top tourist destination. When I drove through it, I did stop at the Indiana Dunes lakeshore, which can be extra interesting because the lake’s level periodically rises and falls and when I was there the lake was at a high level, causing some houses and streets to be underwater.

If you work in higher education, Indianapolis turns out to be a major location, and there’s a good chance you will end up traveling there at some point. Thankfully the downtown was renovated and re-energized some time ago so it’s not a bad place to travel to. Not great but not bad.

As someone else mentioned, “Breaking Away” is a wonderful movie, with scenes in the abandoned rock quarries used as swimming holes by the locals.

Slim pickings after that. If one is a fan of Indy car auto racing or Note Dame football, there’s that. There’s also basketball and the movie “Hoosiers” but those are elements of local culture and history, they aren’t physical places for a visitor to go see.

Oh wait, there is a place: the small town of Columbus, Indiana. Which I’d never heard of until I read a NY Times article about its truly remarkable set of houses and buildings designed by superstar architects. Saarinen, Pei, etc. as well as public art by Henry Moore, Chihuly, etc. If you have even just a middling interest in architecture, Columbus lives up to its advertising and is definitely worth a visit. It deserves to be better known.

I am pleased that the abbreviations for many of the province names are the names of ancient storied realms, rather than being based phonetically on the modern name.

To what extent are the modern official province names traditional and to what extent are they political inventions made the last century (e.g. “Mumbai” in India is somewhat of an invention of Maratha nationalists). If some of them recent inventions, to what extent is the official name used in ordinary speech?

A thing about the US states is that many of the less populated states are the biggest in the map, meaning that neither (the small, overpopulated states and the big, underpopulated states) are particularly obscure.

Probably the more obscure could be the more rural states of New England (small and with low population), like Vermont, Maine or New Hampshire, and even that have some things that rescue them from total obscurity (the stories of Stephan King, the role of NH in the primaries, and now Bernie Sanders).

I feel it’s worth drawing a distinction here. We’ve heard of Chicago, Detroit, and maybe Baltimore if we watch recent American TV drama. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we know they are in states called Illinois, Michigan, and Maryland.

I vote Qinghai as the most obscure province. Everyone has heard of Tibet but no-one knows Qinghai. I get somewhat tired of trying to explain it as ‘Tibet, but not Tibet as China defines it’. I’ve heard it referred to also as China’s gulag. Overall though I’m a big fan of dusty god forsaken western Chinese provinces.

For non-americans, it is definitely not Nebraska or another Mid-western state. Every English school book has a section about Nebraska because of “how boring it is”. Delaware is also known to those Europeans who have studied business or law…

Before Bill Clinton it was definitely Arkansas… Now I am not too sure.
Its between those states: Vermont (before Bernie), Maine, New Hampshire, Idaho.

Without that spelling of Shaanxi, there would be two provinces named Shanxi. At least a few foreign publishers would neglect to add the tone marker and even with it, foreigners wouldn’t know how to pronounce it. It also doesn’t help that the terra cotta warriors are in Xi’an, which has to be written that way to clearly signify it is two separate words, and not Xian, which is a separate word.

Ningxia is obscure. Qinghai is also obscure and doesn’t bring to mind a minority group. Hainan is pretty obscure and doesn’t fit the Western conception of China. If you asked Chinese they would of course say foreigners think Taiwan is the most obscure Chinese province.

It can’t be that obscure. When I saw the post title on twitter I thought, “Well, Shaanxi is just like Shanxi but with an extra a and that’s sort of weird” but that’s the sort of thing that makes you remember a province and I could only name around 2/5 of China’s provinces. If we’re going for obscure I’d do Heilongjiang since that hasn’t been part of China for a lot of China’s history and doesn’t feature in any current conflicts.

My vote would be for either Ningxia because it’s small and obscure or Qinghai 青海 because it’s really big, but still obscure’ and a “proper” Province 省. (Qinghai’s the big internal province to the west of Ningxia).

I immediately thought of Ningxia, so that’s a good choice. Since westerners know so little about China, the more interesting question is which province name, not including independent cities like Beijing and Shanghai, is most recognizable in the West. Maybe Tibet. But Tibet is not the actual Chinese name (which is Xizang), so that doesn’t count. Guangdong is big in the international business world, but that’s a small world. Sichuan is pretty well known because of the cuisine.

Taiwan it might be even more well known, but many westerners don’t know that it’s technically part of China (according to both the Mainland and Taiwanese constitutions.)

Ningxia would also be obscure to Chinese people, which makes it an especially good choice.

As an outsider to the US, we probably know the ones that are physically large and prominent from the settler/Wild West culture of the 19th century, like Nebraska and Idaho. Actually, I guess the most obscure ones are small north- and mid-Atlantic states. Maine, also Rhode Island. I’d guess most of us would struggle to colour in Maryland on a map.

Least obscure to an outsider by far: New York, then California. Then Texas and Florida. Thus ends the baseline knowledge of a European of moderate education and life experience.

Then the Deep South states have the Civil War and Civil Rights; the others have Elvis, horseracing and bourbon, and that one song about country roads. The Western states have Western movies and Mormons, and we know one state is named after Washington. In New England, Massachusetts and New Hampshire are well-known for their politics. New Jersey has Bruce. In the mid-west we hear about Iowa every four years but we don’t know much about Minnesota or Wisconsin. A lot more non-Americans will have heard of Detroit than those who will know it is in Michigan, and to some extent Chicago / Illinois is similar.

Delaware is a famous state of incorporation. I know that’s a thin reed, but it is something. Similarly with Oklahoma and the musical. New Hampshire and Iowa get in the news every four years in the Presidential race.

In what context would a foreigner have ever heard of West Virginia or New Mexico?

New Mexico is the state where Breaking bad takes place. Many foreigners have seen this shows. It has also as the same name as a big country that everyone knows, and this is enough to make it well-known because kids are told “don’t make confusion between New Mexico, a state in the US”, and Mexico, a country south of it.

Not Idaho, as the name is known because of the movie “my own private Idaho”.

Maine, which was proposed above, is well-known in many ways, for example because many world-wide best-selles by Stephen King or by John Irving take place there. It has also an interesting history, and the same name as a river in France, which contributes a little bit, al least in francophone countries, to its notoriety. A similar thing plays in favor of Georgia, which is quasi-homonym of the country of origin of Stalin, and is made better known by that, if only for the sake of avoiding confusion.

Nebraska is probably the most obscure. Oklahoma is a good contender to.

We outsiders may have heard of The Shining, but we largely don’t know that Stephen King books are set in Maine.

I think there is a clash of paradigms here between States that are famous, and States that are home to famous things. Detroit – Motown, Eminem, maybe techno – we know about this stuff. We don’t necessarily know that Detroit is in a state called Michigan. But I guarantee you that Mississippi would be in the top-ten well-known states, and that many respondents could not tell you what exactly Mississippi is famous for, apart from being named after a big river.

The most obscure state is Kansas. In fact it’s claim to fame is obscurity, summarized in the quote from the Wizard of Oz: “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” This is to say, “We have left nowhere and are now somewhere.” Kansas is a metaphor for being a place where nothing happens, where nothing is created or destroyed, where nothing is dangerous. Obscurity means the absence of danger or novelty.

The most obscure Chinese province, I say, is Anhui. It’s not a coastal province, but it isn’t really central either. It doesn’t have a famous cuisine, like Hunan or Sichuan. Or, like Hunan, a famous native son (Chairman Mao). Jiangxi is likewise obscure, but it played a central role in modern Chinese history as the origin of the Long March and the original base of the Communists. Ningxia and Gansu’s desert landscapes actually make them popular tourist destinations among Chinese people. Not so Anhui. It isn’t rich, like Guangdong, or poor, like Guizhou. It doesn’t have dramatic scenery, like Guangxi. It’s just kind of there.

It’s a good argument, but I’ve actually heard of Anhui and recognize it as the name of a Chinese province. Whereas I’d never heard of Ningxia (or probably I have, but forgot). Actually there are others whose names I’d forgotten: Gansu, Heilongjiang (though I certain do recognize the name of the city Harbin), Qinghai, Liaoning, etc.

West Virginia. The geographical features that are mentioned in that John Denver song aren’t even in the state, yet the West Virginia State Legislator still went and declared it the official state song. Such a great message to send to potential visitors.

I can state that, as a foreigner, Chicago definitely sucks up all of Illinois rep and as a result we are hardly aware that Illinois exists. In fact, my impression is that Illinois consists entirely of Chicago + corn. (And this is after having been there.)

I’m gonna say Washington. For many foreigners I’ve spoken with, they don’t realize Washington DC and Washington state are different, and located at completely opposite ends of the country. Sure, everyone knows Seattle, but the two Washingtons are confusing.

Otherwise I definitely pick Maine. You don’t drive through it to get anywhere, ever, and I’ve never personally met a Maine-ite. I guess they have lobsters, but how many foreigners know that?

For China, I also pick Ningxia. Gansu has famous cuisine from Lanzhou that all Chinese would be familiar with, at least.

Got to be Wyoming, surely ?
Google ‘Wyoming in popular culture’, and you get virtually nothing compared to its competition.
It’s almost empty, with the area of a mid sized European country and the population of a mid sized town… and is bordered almost entirely by runners-up for most obscure state, so even if you tried to leave, you’d still be in the middle of nowhere.
And it’s a one of only three states for US land based nuclear missiles – which gives some idea of the value the government puts on it.

Kentucky, based on the fact that (a) it’s not well known, but (b) nobody’s even suggested it as an obscure state. The only things I can think of to attract attention are the Kentucky Derby (center of a sport even more internationally obscure than NASCAR) and Kentucky Fried Chicken, which could just as easily be named after a person (like McDonald’s) or based on a combination of obscure words (like Pepsi).

We have a summer class on urban economics that I TAed for. The professor made a question about Nevada and asked how the invention of AC would impact demand for housing there. All the students were like “what is Nevada?”

No one else mentioned it, which contributes to the fact that its an unknown. I know people have heard of Vegas but wouldn’t associate it with the state.

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